While Sony works on Morpheus for PS4 and Oculus continues to developer Oculus Rift, Google is offering a more mundane approach to the virtual reality space called Google Cardboard. It sounds like an April Fool's Day prank, but Google Cardboard is a DIY VR headset offering developed by a two-man team (in Europe) at Google that uses a simple cardboard headset, and a few household items to offer VR using an Android phone and a Google app.

The homemade headset and Android-based VR solution was revealed at I/O 2014, along with some simple rudimentary development tools so would-be Cardboard developers can tinker around with the offering.

Obviously the design is so simple that those who do not have the knack for making things out of other things will likely be able to buy a kit on the Internet at some point in the not-too-distant future.

The VR headset is made up of cardboard, a couple of cheap lenses that you can buy at Amazon and some other simple household items. After you assemble this makeshift holder, you download an app for your Android phone, slap said phone into the holder, and put it on your face!

More detailed instructions on how to assemble the device can be found over at developers.google.com/cardboard. Obviously at this very early stage there is very little you can do with the technology beyond the demo created by Google, but with a tool kit out in the wild, we suspect there will be more offerings in the future...

Comments

Right now, the VR market is not all that good. Some people remember the Virtual Boy, and those who did not know about, are told by those who did. But the biggest problem is adoption of really new technology that we had not seen yet. Most people are still thinking of VR headsets as more of a gimmick, and that will take time to overcome.

But a cheap VR system, might just prove to people that it is more viable (and prove that VR systems are not all prone to the "Virtual Boy" seizures. Seriously, did no one at Nintendo bother to play the F***ing thing before releasing it in the US?).